Information Access Costs With an Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology
• Virtual Reality

Background:

• Spatial integration tasks show performance costs influenced by information proximity.
• Head movements have minimal impact on performance costs in prior studies.
• AR-HMDs introduce novel factors for spatial integration cost analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify performance costs in a spatial integration task using an AR-HMD.
• To investigate the effect of increasing visual separation on task performance.
• To compare AR-HMD performance costs with previous findings on wide-angle monitors.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed a spatial integration task involving judging XY coordinates within a target zone.
• Information separation was varied across multiple lateral visual angles.
• Response time and accuracy were measured.

Main Results:

• Response time significantly increased with greater information separation.
• Accuracy remained unaffected by the degree of separation.
• AR-HMD performance costs were substantially higher than on a monitor.
• Head movements impacted response time significantly beyond 32 degrees of separation.

Conclusions:

• A task-device interaction exists, where head movement costs depend on information type.
• AR-HMDs necessitate careful consideration of task characteristics for information separation modeling.